told us that something of importance was at hand; and, in the midst of a group of municipal officers, Petion, the mayor of Paris, arrived.  No man in France wore a milder visage, or hid a blacker heart under it.  He was received with shouts, and after a show of resistance, just sufficient to confirm his character for hypocrisy, suffered himself to be led to the front of the grand balcony, bowing as the man of the people.  Another followed, a prodigious patriot, who had been placed at the head of the National Guard for his popular sycophancy, but who, on being called on by the mob to swear “death to the King;” and hesitating, felt the penalty of being unprepared to go all lengths on the spot.  I saw his throat cut, and his body flung from the balcony.  A cannon-shot gave the signal for the march, and we advanced to the grand prize of the day.  I can describe but little more of the assault on the Tuileries, than that it was a scene of desperate confusion on both sides.  The front of the palace continually covered with the smoke of fire-arms of all kinds, from all the casements; and the front of the mob a similar cloud of smoke, under which men fired, fled, fell, got drunk, and danced.  Nothing could be more ferocious, or more feeble.  Some of the Sections utterly ran away on the first fire; but, as they were unpursued, they returned by degrees, and joined the fray.  It may be presumed that I made many an effort to escape; but I was in the midst of a battalion of the Faubourg St Antoine.  I had already been suspected, from having dropped several muskets in succession, which had been thrust into my hands by the zeal of my begrimed comrades; and a sabre-cut, which I had received from one of our mounted ruffians as he saw me stepping to the rear, warned me that my time was not yet come to get rid of the scene of revolt and bloodshed.

At length the struggle drew to a close.  A rumour spread that the King had left the palace, and gone to the Assembly.  The cry was now on all sides—­“Advance, the day is our own!” The whole multitude rushed forward, clashing their pikes and muskets, and firing their cannon, which were worked by deserters from the royal troops; the Marseillais, a band of the most desperate-looking ruffians that eye was ever set upon, chiefly galley-slaves and the profligate banditti of a sea-port, led the column of assault; and the sudden and extraordinary cessation of the fire from the palace windows, seemed to promise a sure conquest.  But, as the smoke subsided, I saw a long line of troops, three deep, drawn up in front of the chief entrance.  Their scarlet uniforms showed that they were the Swiss.  The gendarmerie, the National Guard, the regular battalions, had abandoned them, and their fate seemed inevitable.  But there they stood, firm as iron.  Their assailants evidently recoiled; but the discharge of some cannon-shots, which told upon the ranks of those brave and unfortunate men, gave them new courage, and they poured onward.